Wage Gap

Monday night, Governor Jindal of Louisiana signed the Louisiana Equal Pay for Women Act into law, an important step forward toward achieving equal pay for the women of Louisiana. 

The Act resembles the federal Equal Pay Act. It bans discriminatory pay based on sex, with exceptions for differences bases on seniority systems, merit systems, and systems that measure earnings by quantity or quality of production. It also provides an exception for differences based on "a bona fide factor other than sex," with clear requirements that the employer must show that the factor is related to the job and that there are no alternative practices that would serve the same business purpose. By limiting the "bona fide factor other than sex" defense, the Louisiana Act avoids creating potential loopholes for employers to assert defenses so broad that they may themselves be based on sex (such as prior salary history or stronger salary negotiation skills).  Read more »

Image source:Beartooth NBC

There are a lot of different metrics used to rank the states and the District of Columbia. Geographic size, population, and various economic measures are particularly popular. Naturally, I’m sure you’ve wondered how Montana, or “The Treasure State,” compares to all of the other states. Well, Montana is big: it is ranked 4th in geographic size. It doesn’t have too many people, though, and it ranks near the bottom on population metrics: it is 44th in population and 48th in population density. Unfortunately, Montana also ranks near the bottom of all the states, and the District of Columbia, based on its wage gap. Data compiled by the National Women’s Law Center places Montana 43rd in the wage gap rankings: women in the state earn 74.6 cents for every dollar earned by their white, non-Hispanic male counterparts.

On the 50th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, Montana Governor Steve Bullock decided to tackle the wage gap problem head on by creating the Equal Pay for Equal Work Task Force to determine whether there is inequality in pay for women. Montana has an impressive history of advocating for women: Montana women earned the right to vote in 1914, six years before the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, and the first woman ever elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin, hailed from “Big Sky Country.” Read more »

All too often, pay discrimination goes undetected because employers maintain policies that punish employees who dare try to inquire about their salary. These punitive pay secrecy policies mean that employees could be fired, demoted, or otherwise penalized simply for trying to inquire about wages. Unfortunately, research has shown that nearly half of private sector employees believe they will be punished if they dare talk about their wages. 

This week Congresswomen DeLauro tried to do something about these unfair policies. She offered an amendment that would have meant that defense contractors could not retaliate against workers who try to share or inquire about salary information. Who would disagree with that? Well, apparently the House Rules Committee did. Read more »

This might be difficult, but try, for a minute, to imagine Congress as a group of artisans – glass blowers, perhaps – who must use their breath to shape the world we live in. Actually, that shouldn’t be too difficult. They may not be artistically inclined (or maybe they are) but obviously, Congress is in the business of shaping our lives through debate (aka their breath) and legislative action.

Today marks the 50^th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, yet Congress has apparently forgotten the importance of using its power for positive change. Read more »

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act, giving us the opportunity to look back on what it took to get that landmark law in place, and what it will take to finish the unfinished business of achieving fair pay. 

Efforts to end the practice of paying women less than men for work in the same job have been underway for a very long time — well over a hundred years, in fact. The 41st Congress passed an appropriations bill in 1870 — 1870! — that prohibited gender pay discrimination in federal jobs. Unfortunately, by the time it got to the Senate, it was severely watered down and only applied to new employees. Enforcement of this bill was virtually non-existent. 

Even back then, the injustice of paying women less than men for work in the same job had support amongst women's rights advocates and even some mainstream press outlets. For example, in 1891 the Washington Post optimistically declared, "The working world is rapidly coming to apprehend the justice of giving equal remuneration to women who do as much and as good work as men."  Read more »

Too many managers today still bring a 1950s mindset to the 21st century workplace. In the 50s and early 60s, shows like Leave it to Beaver taught Americans that “a woman’s place is in the home and I guess as long she’s in the home she might as well be in the kitchen.” Seriously, that comes straight from the mouth of The Beav and Wally’s dad. Check it out:

In fact, the ‘men bring home the bacon/women fry it up in the pan’ trope wasn’t even true in 1963 when the Equal Pay Act became law – 37% of women were in the labor force back then. (Coincidentally 1963 is the same year that Leave it to Beaver’s run ended.)

But it wasn’t until the 1970s that women in professional jobs were shown on t.v. When Mary Rhodes (a.k.a. Mary Tyler Moore) found out she was being paid A LOT less than her male predecessor in her t.v. news producer’s job, she was furious. She confronted her boss, Lou. He admitted Mary was better at her job than the guy paid more, but tried to justify his higher salary on the grounds that he had a family to support. Mary told Lou: by that logic you’d be paying single guys less too, but you don’t! Mary was quick on her feet. Read more »

“That’ll be $4.35.”

As I raced to the National Press Club from Starbucks, I wondered how many chai chargers the wage gap would cover. For those who don’t know what a chai charger is, it’s a chai latte with espresso, and about twenty of them just got me through finals week. For those who don’t know what the wage gap is, it’s the average difference in pay between men and women in equivalent positions. That gap currently comes in at 23 cents on the dollar, or $11,000 a year, on average.

“Only women are asked to ‘lean in,’” Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro said through her blue eye shadow and geometrically wondrous glasses. Rushing in from the House floor, DeLauro delivered the keynote speech at the NWLC’s panel celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act. DeLauro pressed for three policy changes to close the gap: equal pay, access to paid leave, and expanding access to childcare.

Joy-Ann Reid, a contributor to MSNBC and managing editor of theGrio, monitored an engaging panel, which featured Ai-jen Poo from Caring Across Generations and the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Hilary Shelton of the NAACP, Fatima Goss Graves of the NWLC, and AnnMarie Duchon, Associate Director of Accommodation Services at UMass Amherst. AnnMarie described her seven- year fight to close her wage gap. Read more »

You probably knew that raising the minimum wage would help families escape poverty. But did you think that states with higher minimum wages would also have smaller wage gaps? If so, you’d be right! Yesterday NWLC released a new analysis showing that the average gender wage gap in states with minimum wages above $7.25 per hour (the minimum required by the federal government) is three cents smaller than the average wage gap in states with minimum wages of just $7.25. Three cents might not sound like a lot but if we shaved three cents off the national wage gap of 23 cents we would close it by over 13 percent!

We also showed that among the ten states with the widest wage gaps in 2011, only two had minimum wages above $7.25. Seven of the ten states with the narrowest wage gaps in 2011 had minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25 per hour.

This analysis has already received coverage in The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, Think Progress, The Week Magazine, Pew Stateline, and several state outlets. We’re excited that the connection between the minimum wage and the wage gap is getting such great attention.

In 1963, when the Equal Pay Act passed, the typical wage gap between men and women was 41 cents. Today, it stands at 23 cents. 

We've come a long way. But we still have a long way to go. Yesterday, the National Press Club was packed with folks eager to hear from a five-star group of panelists about what we need to do to finally close the gap. 

Marcia Greenberger described the worn-out stereotype that is still used to rationalize lower pay for women — that women work for "pin money" while men work to support the family. 

Joy-Ann Reid added that although the Archie Bunker world where women's "proper place" is in the home (which, she noted, was never the reality for all women other than on tv) is in some ways far behind us, women still get paid less than men in the same job based on the bizarre-o notion that simply because they're women, they are somehow worth less. 

And the wage gap is much worse for African-American and Hispanic women. Read more »

There are many things that the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") does to protect Americans: DHS' mission includes everything from preventing terrorism and enhancing security to managing our borders and ensuring disaster resilience. However, DHS does NOT currently protect the Americans employed by its contractors and subcontractors from retaliation for discussing wages with coworkers. 

Yesterday, Representative Rosa DeLauro introduced an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act that would bar contractors and subcontractors doing business with DHS from retaliating against employees who discuss their wages. Seems reasonable, right? Punitive pay secrecy policies allow employers to maintain discriminatory practices and the threat of retaliation makes employees feel powerless. Who would object to non-discrimination and anti-retaliation provisions, you may ask? 

Twenty-six members of the House Committee on Appropriations. 

Rather than supporting the rights of employees to seek out pay disparities and combat wage discrimination, the committee passed a substitute amendment that substituted all of the substance of the DeLauro amendment with hot air.  Read more »